Episode 106

Hate waiting a week for the next episode of Radio Rental? Subscribe to Tender Foot Plus to get early access to episodes, add free listening, and even some bonus scary stories. Visit tenderfootplus.com for details. Take a break from the same old boring blockbusters, and experience a new kind of movie night with Radio Rental. At Radio Rental, our videos come to life in your living room. Defy all logic and reasoning and make you question your own reality. This is not your ordinary video rental store. At Radio Rental, we carry one of a kind videos, so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone. Radio Rental. Look who it is. Hey, welcome to Radio Rental. Yeah, it's me, Jeremy. See, it's written on my vest. Hey, how come I don't get to take the vest home with me? When I get teleported home, I'm just in my normal shirt. Feel like at least you can do is give me some mulch for all the trouble, just a suggestion, you know. In case you don't remember, ever since I first stepped foot in the Radio Rental, this store has been messing with me. It's like infected my brain or something. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but it just kidnaps me whenever it feels like it. Well, I say kidnaps, but it's really like I'm just spontaneously teleported, like that. Anyway, at first I was scared. Then I was kind of pissed, which I'm sure you can understand. But now, I don't know. I think it makes me kind of distinguished. I'm an interdimensional traveler. Hey, Jeremy, what do you like to do for fun? I like to travel interdimensionally. Feel like that's gotta get some women, you know what I mean? Well, sure. I wish I was getting teleported to like an alien planet or like, Miami, not like five miles on the road, but hey, free travel is free travel. All right, now let's pop in one of these scary tapes. Hey, is it just me? Or is there a bit of an echo in here? This was probably around 2006, 2007. Time I was living in Southern California in the San Fernando Valley. It's kind of a desert landscape, naturally. In the outskirts of it, it's still desert landscape and a lot of rocks and hiking trails. And it's really pretty, actually. It kind of looks the same as it did about a hundred years ago. It's a speck of you western backdrop. But around that time, there was really much to do all of the time, so I'd go on hikes and explore. No one of the hikes that I went on. I found this cave in a state park called a Scorpion State Park. There's a big giant rock cliff face and a giant slit of rock in the middle of it, and it's just this beautiful cave to explore. It was always very pretty, had a large opening at the very top of the cave. Late in a lot of natural sunlight, it looked like a giant cathedral. It's just really peaceful. I'd always only explored it in the daytime, never really going there at night. I think to try to do it at night time would have been too dangerous. There were just too many rocks. It was very steep and the terrain was really rough. I mean, you really had to kind of watch where you're going even in the daytime. You had to climb over things. It was a giant obstacle course, essentially. At the time, I was living with a bunch of roommates and my girlfriend. One night, we were just kind of sitting around trying to figure out what we were going to do for the evening. I just kind of threw out this cave that I'd come across in this park. They all got really excited. They wanted to go see this cave that I was talking about and explaining. This is maybe a week or so after Halloween, so we had a big bag of those little tea lights that you've put inside of Jack Lanterns to light them up. One of my friends suggested that we just take a couple of these leftover bags and we light up the entire cave on the inside to make it look nice, so we're like, "Okay, let's go do that." We all jump in a car and we drive and we get to the cave. We're hiking up this trail and usually you see somebody on the trail walking, going for a run, walking their dog, but this time there was just nothing. We were the only ones in the trail, which was really peaceful and it was really nice. As we were getting there, the sun started to go down and I remembered I should have probably brought a flashlight, but I figured, well, we're not really climbing to the top ridge or anything. We're not going to be above the cave, we're just going to be inside of it. We should be fine. We hike up into the cave, we start setting up all the tea light candles everywhere, we light them up and it's really nice. The whole cave lights up, it looks like a giant cathedral. We're the only ones in the cave. There's only one way, one way out, just one giant chamber essentially. Maybe 10, 15 minutes goodbye and we're just talking, laughing, cracking jokes and then the mood started to shift. We started hearing these strange sounds kind of coming from inside the cave. It came in low at first. We thought maybe it was an owl or a hawk or something, but then it kept going and getting louder and louder. It would cut between growls to kind of these paint moans. At first we thought maybe it was coming from above the cave, but we kept looking up. There was nothing there. The entire time we had hiked into the cave, we never saw another person, we never heard anything. The sounds started getting louder and they were coming from seem like inside the cave, not from outside. It was really disturbing because I don't know if you ever heard what a pig being slaughtered sounds like. It sounded sort of like that. These screeches of pain and they just kind of came in waves. We just kind of keep going and then it would be silence and it would start up again. They just kind of kept going in waves. Once it became apparent that it wasn't dying down that it was getting louder, we tried to rationalize it. My friends were like, oh, it's probably some high school kids messing with us. Kind of hiding in the rocks somewhere, but we never saw flashlight above the cave. We never heard anyone. We never saw anything. Thought maybe I'd pack a coyotes, maybe I'd gotten something outside the cave because of the pained kind of squeals and groans that were coming from them. They were just getting louder, but they were coming from inside the cave. It seemed and we kept kind of looking around. We couldn't see anything in there at all. They just kept getting louder and louder. There's only one way and one way out of the cave. We never saw anyone or heard anyone else on the trail. We never saw flashlight. I mean, it was pitch black. I don't know how anybody could walk around up there. If they were trying to scare us up there, they would have had to lean into the cave from the opening from the top to kind of scream down. We would have seen or heard them at that point. I've only heard animal being cut up once in my life and it sounded like what we heard that night, like something being ripped apart and dying in pain and just anger. Eventually we all got kind of creeped out and we said, "Well, let's just leave." The sounds kind of intense. We blow out the candles and we gather them all up and we head down the trail, but now it's it's pretty dark and it's nighttime, so we have to be really careful climbing out of this cave and it's a rock field essentially, so you're grabbing rocks and you're climbing over boulders to get down. We get down to the main trail and we're walking back to our car in the dark. We can barely see, but it's a clear night, so we can see that they're stars and that's sort of the only light source we have. As we're going down the trail back to the car, about a mile or so, my girlfriend at the time grabbed my arm. She's really freaking out. She's kind of hyperventilating and breathing really heavily and she's pointing behind us and she says whatever it is doesn't want us here. Just take a look, take a look and she's kind of bearing her head down into my chest and kind of looking down and that one to look back. Look, look, and she keeps pointing and I look around and at the very top of the cave at the very edge of the ridge line where all the boulders were. There is an outline of a man, a shadowy kind of outline of a person standing atop the cave. We could see the outline of it because of the moon light and the star lights. We could see the shape the outline of a person and it was just surprising. I remember thinking like, oh, that's a person. That's up there. How did they get up there without a flashlight? How are they moving around? That seems really dangerous. That was my first thought. My friends kind of looked around at the same time and they're like, oh, that does look like a person. That's really weird. We kept walking in the trail and every couple of staffs would kind of turn around and look over again and we would see that it was in a different spot. It would just shift from position from one spot above the cave to another like it was just sort of phasing and reappearing in different spots. The same silhouette never swayed its arms and never looked like it was running, moving, walking, anything. It was just standing still sort of keeping watch, like just looking out at us. It was just appearing and reappearing in different spots. Never saw flashlight whenever saw anything. These were stretches that were that would take quite a bit of time to get from one point to another, but to be doing it in the dark with no flashlight with nothing, we didn't really have an explanation for that. Whenever saw the movement of somebody moving from one point to another, we would see it, we'd walk down a bit, look around, and it was in a different position that was way too far to get to that quickly. To be moving that fast in the dark, in a rock field, between boulders, I don't know how anybody could move that fast, without having a way to see clearly, without falling into the cave or falling down this cliff phase. My girlfriend was really scared, she was kind of shaking, grabbing onto my arm, and I said, "Oh, it's just the breeze, maybe rustling some bushes, and the starlight is playing turics in our eyes, and that's what we're seeing." Had the genuine curiosity of what it was, I think at one point I even suggested, "Let's go back and just see if we can get a better idea or a picture of what this is, but my friends, the group that I was with, they wanted no part in that. They just wanted to leave, they didn't want to sit face, whatever it was, and agitated. We walked back to our car, and we made it home, and we never really talked about it anymore. I even went back to the cave a couple times after that, but only in the daytime, and it was never like that, it was completely peaceful. You could hike in, you could clearly see where you were going, and I think I even climbed to the very top of the ridge above the cave after that, and I was trying to stand in the boulders of where I'd seen the shadow, and getting from one point to another, in the daylight was even a struggle. They're pretty big, and they're placed pretty far apart from each other, and I kind of just thought to myself, "There's no way somebody could have ran from one point to another, in the dark, in the rocks, like I'm having a hard time clearly seeing where I'm stepping." But in the daytime, I mean, it was a peaceful vibe, it never felt weird or scary at all. It was beautiful, actually. But at nighttime, the whole mood, the atmosphere just changed and shifted, you know, it was almost like you shouldn't be there at night, it just had a different feeling altogether. Years later, out of curiosity, I kind of looked up the history of that area in that park, and there's a little tad bit of information that kind of made it all kind of come together. It was a legend that in that cave, which is called the Cave of Moonits, there was a shaman that lived back in the day, who had ordered the death of his son, and ordered this shaman and moonits who lived in the cave to do the task to kill his son, and that he did. He captured him, took him back to the cave, tied him up, and dismembered him alive in the cave, and then threw his body parts out the cave to the search party that was looking for him. The tribe's people turned against the sheep, ordered his son's death, and ordered the death of Moonits, too. The legend goes that while he was asleep on top of the cave in the ridge line, that he was essentially murdered. The erectus stomach opened, pulled out his entrails, and he died there. Those two gruesome deaths happened in that cave and are tied to it. It was surprising to me to read the history of it and find out that this legend exists in direct connection to this cave. I think if anybody was to be killed and have their stomach ripped open, and their limbs ripped off, it would have sounded very much like what we had heard that night, and I'm sure our presence was not welcomed at that point. Whatever it was sounded angry, and sounded like it was in pain, and then whatever or whoever was at the very top of the cave definitely kept an eye on us the entire time until we left. I think they saw that shaman, Moonits, oh that's bokeh. This is why I don't go camping, and I also don't hear things in caves, and then I also don't go see what it is, and then I also, that's it. All those things I don't do, so this story would have been so fucking short for me. I don't like being out in raw nature just like, just like exposed, you know what I'm saying. Alright, let's take a little break for ads, and we'll be right back. Hope Couture, high fashion, Paris Malone, Catwalk Baby, yes you heard the rumors right, the Terry Carnation Collection is in the Radio Rental merch store right now, just go to shop.tenderfoot.tv to get your hands on this season's hottest styles, fit check, slay, glow up fire, to rip. I don't know what any of that means, but it's written here. Okay, and we're back from ads, next thing, whoa what the fuck was that? Did you just hear that? Your place is haunted, a yo, teleport me home after this, I'm done for the day store. Alright, here we go. In 2023, I spent eight months living in Utah as you went to basin, it's a place that feels like it's caught between the real world and something else entirely. My boyfriend at the time, my now friend Ray, has 15 acres of land sitting right next to Skinwalker Ranch, and for decades this remote desert, bad land area has been one of the most scientifically studied paranormal hotspots in the world. There's a whole show on the history channel about all the scientific studies going on over there. These special access government programs, your tax dollars went to pay for it. So one of my first encounters there happened on a warm spring day, not long after Ray and I arrived from our apartment the next town over. I was standing on the hill just looking out onto, you know, the maces, just enjoying the beautiful scenery, just a beautiful, beautiful day. All of a sudden my piece was interrupted by a cry calling out from a little area down below where there's a pond and a small cup of trees. The voice said, "Help!" I looked at Ray who wasn't too far away and he looked back at me. We were supposed to be the only ones there on the land that day. We just stared at each other, waiting to hear if the sound would come again. It was very jarring and alarming, and it did come again a few moments later. A woman's crying out, "Help!" The voice itself was off. It didn't sound human. It was very flat sounding, and the words "help" helped themselves were drawn out, slowed down, very inorganic sounding, unnatural, way of speaking, kind of like an audio recording that's been slowed down. My normal instinct would be to run down and go help somebody who was calling out for help. But in this case, I had fear of whatever was out there yelling. I didn't have any fear of what it was calling out for help from. Knowing the history of the area, I knew I just had to keep my wits about me, especially after hearing the calls continue. I just frows and didn't know what to do next. The calls came out probably about five or six times, first once, and then more consistently after a few moments, and I feel like it knew that it had our attention. So I looked over at Ray, and he looked back at me and kind of shrugged his shoulders. And like, this is what happens out here, and it kept yelling, and I knew it was waiting for some type of response. I just called back out to it and said, "Yeah, that's not going to work on me." That's when the voice changed. The pitch rose in the voice, and it sounded like it was a child's voice calling out mom. I froze again, and it continued calling out another three or four times. I couldn't take it anymore, it was very disturbing. I yelled out, "Act to it," and said. Nope, you're on your own. I've already raised two kids to adulthood, and the voice has stopped. I knew it wasn't a child. There is no reason it would have been a child. There's no reason child would have been out there in the badlands around mountains of red ants, cacti, these coccled bird plants. There's no children running willy-nilly out there. I was afraid that something was trying to trick me and lure me down there, and I had no idea what I would find if I walked down to that pond. Once it stopped rain, I looked at each other, just wondering if it was going to continue. We waited for a few minutes and it didn't, and we just kind of carried on with the rest of our day. That's all you can do out there. I certainly didn't go down by that pond for a very long time. We just carried on, there's nothing else to do. It stuck in my mind for quite a while. It was definitely on my mind the rest of the day, and I was on high alert the rest of the day just waiting for something else to happen. A couple of months later, in June, another incident took place that really did shake me to my core. Ray and I were setting up for a night of stargazing with a campfire already crackling. It was around 6 or 6.30 pm still light out, and it was just the two of us. We had been temporarily leasing space on a neighboring property that had a trailer that we would sometimes stay in, and I at that point was walking over there to grab some supplies for the evening. As I stepped through a break in the fence that divided the two property lines, I noticed someone standing by a tree on the neighbor's side more towards the road. He was a man. He was six feet tall, dressed in jeans, and a white tank top. At first I wasn't alarmed. We had people stop off in along the road, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ranch itself, and I figured he'd probably seen the campfire smoke and watered closer for a look. We would occasionally invite curious folks into the property if they seemed cool, so I was about to call out and say, "Hey," and move to continue walking towards him. Before the word fully left my mouth, in a single moment, the man transformed into a deer. One second, there was a human figure standing in front of me. The next, it was a deer staring back at me. There wasn't any shifting of faces or limbs, a man was just suddenly a deer. I lost my breath, I lost the words I was going to shout out to him in greeting. I was absolutely frozen in place, probably for a good five minutes. I was standing there. It was a long time, just trying to figure out what I could have possibly seen. When the shift occurred, it happened without any type of visual shift that I could see. It was a six foot man who was standing there, and now it was just a deer. The deer held my gaze for a few seconds before bolting across the property. I could hear its hugs pounding the ground as it ran up a small slope and then paused. I whipped my head back to where the man had been standing. He was definitely gone. I turned back to the deer, but it had vanished too. There was no sound of retreating steps, no rustle of brush. It was just gone. The next day, I told the story to the property owner who had motion-activated cameras set up in the area. I asked him to check the footage from the time of the incident. He called me back later that day confirming the cameras had been triggered exactly when I said the event happened and in the sequence that matched the path the deer man had taken. But the footage showed nothing. No man, no deer, no movement at all. When things happen, you have to move on. You have to keep going, and you can't dwell on things or else it'll eat you up. Especially out there, there are no answers. We don't know what's going on out there. I don't think anybody ever will since the phenomena is very trickster-like. You have to go out there knowing that things will happen and you have to be able to deal with it. And I kind of knew that going in. I had to have my big girl pants on if I was going to go into place next to Skinwalker Ranch. See me, I would never go check that shit out. Stop going down there. You knew you shouldn't have been going down there. Half the time people would be down there, fell down there, or someone told them don't go down there. And they were like, I'ma go down there. That's what you get. You're down there now. That might make me a bad smirking, but it keeps me and a live person. Thank you very much. Well, this has been fun, and, okay, whoa, hey there, hey, sorry man, you scared me. Have you been back there this whole time? Uh, yeah. Oh, hey, yeah, you got a vest on too. Vince, what do you do here, Vince? Uh, I organize the tapes. It's all above board. Uh-huh. All right. Nice to meet you, I guess. Okay, that's it for me, Jammin. Maybe I'll see you again, I have no idea. Apparently, I don't get to know my own schedule. All right, I'm just going to squeeze my eyes real tight and see if that works. Okay, send me home. We got, whoa, uh, I'm trying to get around home. All right, I'm ready, we need me. Whoa, Malachi, I think that was an angel. Whoa. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Stedman. Lead producers are Eric Kintana and Stephen Perez. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. This episode is hosted by Chris Red and features Tony Cavalero. Writing by Meredith Stedman, original score by Makeup and Vanity Set with additional score by J. Ragsdale. Sound design makes him master by Stephen Perez and Cooper Skinner, editing by Eric Kintana, Sean Nerni, Stephen Perez, Meredith Stedman and Cooper Skinner. Our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan, Radio Rental merchandise by Byron McCoy. To shop Radio Rental merch, visit shop.tenderfoot.tv, special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, as well as the Nord Group and the team at Odyssey. If you have a Radio Rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at your scary story at gmail.com or contact us via the form on our website, radio rental USA.com. Follow us on Instagram at Radio Rental. On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate and review. As always, thanks for listening.